The invention relates to the field of aviation.
Part of the pre-flight check of aircraft is to visually inspect the fuel in the fuel cells to ensure that there is no foreign material in the gas tank that could possibly interrupt the flow of fuel from the tank into the engine(s). The primary foreign materials that can be found in the fuel are rust, scale and water; with water being the most common material that could interrupt the flow of fuel from the fuel tank into the engine. Since all of these materials are heavier than aviation fuel, they settle to the lowest part of the fuel tank which is called a sump. At the very bottom of the fuel tank sump is a drain valve.
A typical fuel test to detect contamination of fuel is accomplished by holding a standard fuel sampler cup under the fuel drain valve and allowing a small quantity of fuel, usually a few ounces, to drain into the standard cup. If there is no water or sediment in the sample, all of the fuel in the tank is considered clean and is either returned into the aircraft's fuel tank through the fuel fill valve, or more commonly, dumped on the ground. If however, there is a contaminant in the fuel sample, additional samples need to be taken.
With a standard fuel sampler cup there is only one chamber to drain the fuel into. Therefore all subsequent samples need to be taken into an empty sample cup to ensure that the previous retrieved impurity is gone and the fuel in the tank is actually clean. As a result, the repeatedly retrieved contaminated samples cannot be emptied back into the fuel tank so that they are normally discarded unto the ground until a clean sample is attained and the tank is considered to be free of impurities. This proves to be an ecological hazard and if witnessed, is punishable by a fine from the EPA. The current alternative in this situation is to empty the contaminated fuel samples into a waste fuel can until a clean sample can be attained. This proves to be tedious and time consuming; so not often practiced.
Also due to the geometry and configuration of the fuel tanks, many tanks have more than one fuel drain valve, some having as many as five or more per tank. With a standard sampler cup, the options are either to take a very small sample per drain valve, which is inadequate to truly sample the fuel in the tank, or repeatedly dump the fuel sample, back into the tank or on the ground, during each fuel test. This is again very tedious and time consuming.
It is thus desirable to provide a greatly improved fuel sampling device and fuel sampling method which will become effortless.